How to remove Magix ASIO driver SOLVED

[John Vere]

I fell for another upgrade sale and upgraded Vegas Plat 14 to 17 last night. It also includes an upgrade to Sound Forge 14.  But I forgot this and just like Steinberg , Magix installs a crappy ASIO driver that completely takes over your audio system. Apparently the Magix driver is based on asio4all so we all know how it is also invasive. 

Good thing this is on my Office computer and not my main DAW. 

I looked this up by googling "How to uninstall Magix ASIO driver" and documents go way back to 2009 etc. This issue has been around forever. There is no uninstaller for this driver which is real stupid seeing how much havoc it has caused over time judging by the comments on many audio forums. There's even a few on the Cakewalk forum. But there's no solution that worked for me. 

It is not found anywhere. It is not on program lists, not in device manager and here's were I need help. 

Then I tried to download and install CCcleaner which was another recommendation but Windows gives me the warning posted in the screen shot. 

I used to have a dual log on to this computer but I removed all that. I think. I never seem to have issues with anything else. Is there an alterative to CCcleaner? 

Edited December 12, 2020 by John Vere

[slartabartfast]

12 minutes ago, John Vere said:

I used to have a dual log on to this computer but I removed all that. I think.

Permission issues suggest you may not have completely removed other user accounts, or that files or folders created by other user accounts remain under the ownership of a previous account. To check on what Windows thinks are the users try: https://www.nextofwindows.com/the-net-command-line-to-list-local-users-and-groups

You can take ownership of locations that you do not currently have access to: https://www.howtogeek.com/301768/how-to-take-ownership-of-files-and-folders-in-windows/

You say you are the administrator, but more likely your account is a member of the administrators group. You can access the true godlike administrator account as follows: https://winbuzzer.com/2020/03/11/windows-10-how-to-enable-the-hidden-administrator-account-xcxwbt/ from that account you have access to pretty much anything that can be done--like the old Windows versions administrator accounts.

I have no problem opening the registry editor from any account, so that seems to be an issue with your system uniquely. There are however permissions issues related to registry keys depending on the account used to access it. They can be accessed as follows: https://www.howtogeek.com/262464/how-to-gain-full-permissions-to-edit-protected-registry-keys/

[scook]

Remove the driver from the registry entries in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO

and Cakewalk will not know the driver is installed.

[John Vere]

I feel real dumb-- I was trying to use the REG EDIT command,, this has been replaced with the registry app.  Shows you how often I go there!  Once I got that open I followed Steve's path and problem solved. 

Thanks for both your answers. I will follow @slartabartfast   instruction anyhow as I think you are right and there are some ghosts when I log on. 

 

Still don't know why cccleaner wouldn't install,, I also tried it on my other computer and same thing so it's just a buggy app I don't need. Seems people us Bleachbit now anyhow. Wouldn't mine cleaning this computer up a bit. I use it to test all my downloads before installing to my main DAW. So, probably lots of garbage in there. 

[Xoo]

And (just in case):

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\ASIO

for the 32 bit "ASIO" driver.

[John Vere]

Good tip, But I never choose anything that says 32 bit during installs.  I just looked in my main DAW and there's nothing there.   

But I found  3 unwanted drivers from old interfaces plus that pesky Steinberg driver was still there in the main ASIO location.  

Just got my Motu M4 so now that drivers on my list of just 4 ASIO drivers.  Tascam, Focusrite, Soundcraft and Motu. 

[Bill Phillips]

13 hours ago, John Vere said:

Still don't know why cccleaner wouldn't install,, I also tried it on my other computer and same thing so it's just a buggy app I don't need. Seems people us Bleachbit now anyhow. Wouldn't mine cleaning this computer up a bit. I use it to test all my downloads before installing to my main DAW. So, probably lots of garbage in there. 

FWIW, I used to use CCCleaner all the time but uninstalled it this year. Win10 doesn't like it and flags it as malicious software, IIRC. I always liked the idea that it identified hundreds of registry entries and with my permission deleted them with no noticeable impact on performance. But now, rightly or wrongly, I've grown more trusting of Win10 and am hoping that Win10 is taking care of the mess I used CCCleaner to clean up.

[Maestro]

I've had CCLeaner delete file associations, etc. for installed applications, etc.

Use with Caution.

[Robert Bone]

15 hours ago, John Vere said:

I feel real dumb-- I was trying to use the REG EDIT command,, this has been replaced with the registry app.  Shows you how often I go there!  Once I got that open I followed Steve's path and problem solved. 

Thanks for both your answers. I will follow @slartabartfast   instruction anyhow as I think you are right and there are some ghosts when I log on. 

 

Still don't know why cccleaner wouldn't install,, I also tried it on my other computer and same thing so it's just a buggy app I don't need. Seems people us Bleachbit now anyhow. Wouldn't mine cleaning this computer up a bit. I use it to test all my downloads before installing to my main DAW. So, probably lots of garbage in there. 

You were only off by a single space, which is pretty admirable, for an app most folks rarely use - Regedit is the actual name of the Registry Editor app - no space between Reg and Edit, as shown in this screenshot:

[lapasoa]

Have you ever used Control panel and Programs and Feautures?? It is possible that you can find there the Magix driver and remove it.

[Robert Bone]

24 minutes ago, lapasoa said:

Have you ever used Control panel and Programs and Feautures?? It is possible that you can find there the Magix driver and remove it.

I have Magix Vegas Pro 16 installed, and the entry listed in the Control Panel Uninstall a Program list, does not appear to be the ASIO driver, but rather, some other component.  Here is a screenshot of what shows up on my system, for it:

 

[Maestro]

That is the content installer for applications like Samplitude, ACID Pro, Music Maker, etc.

It has nothing to do with the ASIO Driver.  The ASIO Driver is installed with MAGIX Audio Applicaitons, and it is removed when you uninstall them.  They do not give a separate uninstaller for their Generic Audio Driver, like Steinberg does.

If anyone needs a Generic Audio Driver, I recommend Steinberg's.  That one allows you to share the audio device with other Applications, at the expense of a bit more latency.  MAGIX uses ASIO4ALL, which locks your audio driver.

I don't like it because when I'm on the go and using a Laptop, sometimes I get Skype calls and I don't want to have no Audio in Skype simply because I have/had a DAW running when it came in.

[John Vere]

6 hours ago, lapasoa said:

Have you ever used Control panel and Programs and Features?? It is possible that you can find there the Magix driver and remove it.

If you read my first post you will see this was the first place I looked. I did just say programs list but that was what I was referring to.  

  @Maestro   because we now have WASAPI driver there's no need for any 3rd party generic drivers.  

I certainly won't be installing Sound Forge on my main DAW. I don't need it I use Wave Lab which is very happy working with Cakewalk. I can have both open. 

I am going to fire a email off to Magix and complain. All they need to do is offer the driver as an option as well as build it properly with an uninstaller like 99% of the software in the world has. To bad Sony sold the software to them. 

I'm finding the new version of Vegas 17 buggy as hell, What a waist of $50 I probably go back to version 14.  And one of the stupid reasons I bought it was it says "ASIO support" Overall so far I havn't found one new feature. They changed the GUI, big deal. This reminds me of when I bought Sonar X1. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by John Vere

[Maestro]

1 minute ago, John Vere said:

because we now have WASAPI driver there's no need for any 3rd party generic drivers.  

Correct, but some software stitll doesn't work optimally without ASIO and if you have to round trip or use them while using Cakewalk you are better off just using a Generic Driver instead of WASAPI.  Otherwise, you run into device ownership issues when switching applications - when using Generic ASIO drivers that lock the audio device.  If you do everything within Cakewalk, then that is not an issue.

[Craig Anderton]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

I'm finding the new version of Vegas 17 buggy as hell, What a waist of $50 I probably go back to version 14.  And one of the stupid reasons I bought it was it says "ASIO support" Overall so far I havn't found one new feature. They changed the GUI, big deal. This reminds me of when I bought Sonar X1. 

I'm surprised the deal was for an upgrade to 17, 18 came out last month. Anyway, for me Vegas has always been one of those "save often" programs although to be fair, it recovers what you were doing quite well. I have found that Magix cleaned up a bunch of little things in the interface, which I don't remember now because it's be long since I worked with a previous version, but it seemed like for the first week or so I kept running into little things that made life easier.

I've had no problem using the ASIO drivers for my PreSonus or TASCAM interfaces. Based on scook's post I checked on the driver situation, and the Magix and Steinberg drivers are both installed. Maybe I'll remove them and see if that has any beneficial effects.

[John Vere]

What happened and it might not happen to others is the Magix driver took over Cakewalk and refused to yield. Make sure and check your "Record Latency Adjustment " 

A lot of folks don't know to look there, but that needs to be your interface, not a generic device. Otherwise who knows what your latency adjustment would actually be. 

Therefore if your computer is mostly used for your DAW and you have one or 2 ASIO audio interfaces, make sure those are the only ASIO devices or you "might" have issues you don't want. 

It's a long standing problem with audio and PC computers. The 2 just barley get along. Might be better in the Apple world, but certainly Windows will screw things up if it gets a chance. I try and do all my weird stuff with video etc on my office computer. I don't care if the drivers go wonkey on that machine. But my DAW is sacred ground and I try to stay off the internet and I don't use apps that will conflict with my Audio set up. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by John Vere